The programme is designed to accelerate growth through inspirational keynote events that stimulate peer learning, collaborative discussion, increased exposure to local media and support from the programmes key partners and their network.

The Future50 programme is delivered across Norfolk and Suffolk by Archant, with partners Barclays, Birketts, Lovewell Blake, News and UEA.

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We are delighted to be part of the 2018 Future50 programme

Set up in 2015, Future50 is an exciting business growth programme that is designed to recognise Norfolk and Suffolk’s most innovative companies that are creating jobs and growing at a faster rate than others in their sector.

SOAK Digital selected for Future50

With so many developers teaching themselves and with so many ways to learn, the resources available for developers these days, especially for beginners can sometimes be overwhelming. With that being said, here are a few of SOAKs favourite online learning resources for web developers that may help.

Code Academy is a service that I used regularly when beginning my career as a web developer. It offers many great courses especially if you’re just starting out, such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery and Git to name a few. Code Academy is not just for beginners though, there are more intermediate courses including React JS, Java and Python. New courses are added fairly regularly too and they’ve even added a tutorial recently on how to build an app for the Amazon Alexa.

The courses are fully interactive. You complete each tutorial by typing inside an IDE within your browser window which is a more efficient way to learn.

Almost all the courses are available for free, although there is a Pro subscription which costs $19.99 per month. This gives you access to live technical support, quizzes and practice projects for every course.

Treehouse is a popular service that has thousands of hours of content. They offer almost all the content that Code Academy does but with a lot more variety such as learning WordPress, iOS, Android and even tutorials on how to code for VR.

The courses are available in the form of videos, code challenges and quizzes.

There is a lot of content available however Treehouse is not free. After a 7 day free trial you’ll need to subscribe for £20 a month.

In 2016 Stack Overflow ran a survey which found that 56% of working developers did not have a college degree in computer science or related fields.

The survey also found that the most popular way for developers to learn was by self teaching. 69% of the respondents told Stack Overflow that they were at least partially self-taught with 13% stating that they were entirely self-taught.

Udemy is one of the favourite tutorial websites amongst the SOAK developers.

The courses are mostly available as just videos but some offer quizzes too. There is less interactivity with these tutorials however Udemy offers almost an endless library of content where any computer based subject is available to learn. This is because as long as the course meets Udemy’s standards, anyone is free to upload their own. Even I’ve made a course, Chrome Extensions: Beginners Guide to Building and Publishing which currently has over 100 enrollments. As the courses are created by the Udemy community, it means that the price per course can range from being free to around £200. There is no subscription fee. The price, course length and quality really can vary so make sure you check all of these factors before making a purchasing.

Everyone has heard of YouTube but not everyone is aware that it’s one of the best places for online tutorials. YouTube is not just full of cats and sneezing pandas.

Of course there is no interactivity here so you need to follow along. If you can stomach the adverts, all the content is free and you can learn absolutely anything. The almost infinite library of tutorials available does mean you have to sift through a lot of poor quality content to get to the useful stuff. To give you a helping hand, here are a few of our favourite web development tutorial accounts – The New Boston, Dev Tips, Learn code.Academy and LevelUp Tuts.

The SOAK developers agree that the best way to gain knowledge and expand your skill set is to learn by doing. The online learning resources mentioned above are all excellent ways in achieving just that. There are almost an endless amount of development and programming subjects to learn and are available for little to no cost. Whether you consider yourself an absolute beginner or an experienced developer, there is so much opportunity to keep up to speed with the ever-changing development world.

SOAK Digital selected for Future50

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Online tutorials and learning resources for web developers